Witch-King Gothic
by gothicjedi666
Summary: A Gothic that is thrown in an alternate version of the Charmed Ones is given the powers of a Warlock and then set lose upon a world where magic and mundane both exist.
1. Chapter 1

**Witch-King Gothic. **

**Part One. **

**San Francisco. The Charmed Verse.**

Its not every day you join a coven of witches and then decide to attend some sort of ritual. I still didn't understand exactly what had happen, but from what I could remember I'd been in a circle and there had been candles. I'd thought that the 'witches' had been those new age hippy types that worshipped nature and the moon or whatever.

That turned out not to the case. Things had gotten a little out of hand rather quickly. I'd been drugged, I guessed, and then tied to a stone alter. Whatever it was that those 'witches' had worshipped it wasn't part of nature that was for sure, maybe it had been something demonic or otherwise otherworldly.

I was pretty sure that I'd been sacrificed but the next thing I knew I was lying face down in wet grass and also it was day time, so I guessed that I had been sleeping as it could no longer midnight and the sun was high enough in the sky for it to be lunch time.

Once I was able to stand up I'd patted myself down and discovered that my body wasn't quite as I remembered it being. I'd lost weight and even gained a little muscle. My skin seemed a little paler than normal, the scar I'd gotten on wrist from falling on some broken glass some years ago, was now gone and finally my hair was darker than before. I couldn't tell how much darker it was without a mirror but I had enough of fringe to see that my hair seemed blacker than normal. My clothes were dirty but not badly damaged so I didn't have to worry about exposing myself publicly.

I figured that after a hot shower and something to eat that I would be ready to put that weird event behind me and be able to move on with my life.

Sadly as it turned out it wasn't going to be that easy.

For starters since I didn't live in San Francisco, and I knew I was there as the Golden Gate bridge was very recognisable.

So getting home could be a little tricky, what with my lack of local currency and a non existent passport.

The fact that I was in the United States freaked me out a little. Just how whacked out how those drugs made me that I couldn't remember crossing an entire ocean.

Well I was a long way from the U.K that was for sure, and I had no idea how to get home.

In short I was in a lot of trouble.

After some thought I decided to head to a police station. I'd tell the truth and maybe someone would believe that I had been kidnapped. It wasn't impossible after all, and hopefully they would deport me back to England where I belonged.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you".

The voice came from a nearby bench and I turned to see... myself.

Well not exactly myself, the guy looked more handsome than I was, and younger too. He was dressed in a suit that looked very expensive, and was for some reason cleaning his nails with a knife that looked very much like the one I'd been murdered with.

"Sit down" ordered the man who looked like me.

I did as I was told without any thought and when I realised what I had done I'd tried to get up again, but I couldn't move. It was like I had been super glued to the park bench.

"I'm going to explain a few things to you" said my double "and then I'm going to be off. I have a lot things to do, rewards to hand out other versions of you to mess with".

None of that made any sense and I still wanted to get up and run away but I had no choice but to sit there and listen.

"I arranged to have you ritually sacrificed to me so I could claim your soul" explained the guy who looked a lot like me "I will be keeping your soul as well, but don't worry I'm not going to eat it unlike some of my relatives would".

Now I really, really wanted to run away but I still couldn't move. There was a force pinning me in place.

"Lucky for you my owning of your soul comes with some benefits. For starters your now immortal. You can still be killed but you won't age or die from illness".

That sounded good in theory but I'd rather have my soul back since having a soul allowed you to live on after death.

"I made you into a Warlock, and brought you to this world so that you can amuse me with your efforts to gain power. You did it rather well in other realities and this setting is so full of possibilities".

A lot of what this 'man' was saying still made no sense to me but some of it did.

For example the word Warlock rang a few bells. It could mean male witch but it could also mean evil witch, one who had broken the Wiccan oath.

Given that I was in San Francisco and was apparently a Warlock I figured that I was the latter definition of the word.

This was the world of the Charmed Ones, I was sure of that, and in that show Warlocks are bad guys who go around trying to kill Witches in order to obtain more powers.

That meant that the knife the double of me was playing with must therefore be an athame as those are what Warlocks use to kill Witches as well as to steal their powers. They were used for spells and rituals like the one I was sacrificed in. Last of all they could also be used to kill magical beings as they were magical weapons.

"So I'm an evil Witch" I muttered.

"That you are" replied the thing who apparently owned my soul "but you can be so much more. With a drive like yours and the knowledge you have of this charming little world, you could go far very far indeed. Why settle for being a mere Warlock when you could be a king among Witches or even a Witch-King".

The man then passed me a card and without thought I took it from him and read it.

Witch-King Gothic.

This card bestows the powers of a Warlock Witch-King upon the holder.

Basic Powers.

Spell Casting: The ability to cast spells and perform rituals.

Potion Making: The ability to brew magical potions.

Scrying: The ability to scry for lost objects or people.

Advanced Powers.

Power Absorption: The ability to absorb the powers of other beings.

Blinking: The ability to teleport from one location to another by blinking.

Other Powers.

Immortality: Immunity to ageing and disease

Dark Seduction: The ability to seduce Witches and to make them serve.

While the everything else on the card was easy enough to understand I'd never heard of a power called Dark Seduction, and when I turned to ask about it I found I was alone.

Which left me alone to think about everything that had just happened, so I sat there for a while and pondered what the hell was happening to me.

A few hours later, after giving this whole matter some thought, I decided that things could be worse.

I had no wife, children or even close friends. so there was nothing important that I was leaving behind and as for my career I'd been working a dead end job for lousy pay so there was no sense worrying about that.

And it wasn't as if I had actually had a choice anyway, well not unless the thing that had been sitting next to me on the bench decided to send me back to my world.

It was then I noticed that he'd left the athame behind and that it was sitting on the bench covered in dried blood, my blood.

Taking it felt extremely morbid but I'd need a weapon and if did that power sucking thing it could come in extremely handy.

I then started to tap the hilt of the magical blade against my chin as I sat thinking about how I should start this adventure.

Perhaps I could get home using magic, but I wasn't very motivated to attempt such thing as I still hadn't thought of anything worth going back for, and it wasn't as if this was that a totally unknown alien world. I could easily start a new life here as this an Earth, even if it wasn't my world.

Staying in this city didn't really appeal to me as I didn't want to run afoul of the Charmed Ones and end up getting vanquished.

Finding somewhere to live was important as I needed a base of operations. I was still human, well sort of, so I would need to eat, sleep and all that so setting up a home or a at least some sort of lair was high on my list of proprieties.

However that could wait as the first thing I needed to do was to get cleaned up.

A shower and change of clothes was in order. I didn't have any money but that didn't matter as I was an evil being now. There was no need for me to pay for anything when I could steal what it was I needed and no one powerful enough to stop would try just to prevent such minor crimes.

As a Warlock I had the power to transport myself to anywhere I wished. so maybe I had just had to think about what I desired to find and then I'd...

**Closed Clothing Store. San Francisco. **

End up exactly where I desired to be.

Blinking was easy enough all you had to do was to know where you wanted to be and then to blink. The trip had been super quick and I didn't feel the least bit dizzy from the sudden dislocation, although I did feel as left something behind but the feeling faded fast.

Now that I was in a clothing store full of nice outfits I become more aware of my own tattered wear than I had been before so I quickly started to shop for clothes, not that I intended to pay for anything so stealing would be a more accurate word to use.

Everything I stole was black, the idea of wearing anything too colourful made me feel like a clown, but I liked black clothing even if did make other people think of me as a Goth.

Once I had changed I packed the rest of the clothing packed into a bag I went and found a mirror.

My skin was too pale but I figured that this might have had more to with my new body having never been exposed to sunlight rather than having an inhuman appearance. My hair was indeed darker than it had used to be, in fact it seemed to be jet black rather than the very dark brown it once had been.

"Hmm need shoes" I muttered to myself before accidentally Blinking elsewhere.

**Closed Shoe Store. San Francisco. **

As it turned out I was inside some sort of shopping mall. I only travelled a matter of meters I could even see the clothing store I'd robbed from here.

After finding a decent pair of steel-toe cap boots, and a belt as the store was also stocked with accessories, I took a seat and began thinking more about what I was going to do with my new found life.

Finding a new home was must, I'd already decided that, but I really did need a more long term plan than that.

The thing which had looked like me, an concept which I was still having trouble dealing with, had told me that he wanted to see me try and gain power.

Admittedly that was a very tempting idea and as a goal it shouldn't be to hard to achieve as I had a lot of knowledge about this world. Also as a Warlock I already had a lot of power. To gain more all I really needed to do was to fully understand my powers and then figure out ways to use them to get gain even more power.

It was such a shame that I was limited to this one world. If other fictional versions of Earth, and perhaps other worlds, existed then I could rapidly advance in power so easily by visiting just a few of those places.

Still this world had magical items and other means to make oneself more powerful but those who tried to claim such things often got themselves vanquished by the Charmed Ones, or if not by them then by rival evil beings.

My only hope was to stay under the radar of those more powerful than me and to build up my strength slowly. If I tried to rise too far too fast someone would knock me down, but if I moved carefully and didn't draw attention to myself then I could become very powerful.

First I was going to need knowledge. I needed to better understand what it was I could do with my new abilities.

"Freeze, hands in the air!".

Rather rudely I was jolted out my thoughts by two police officers, who had somehow managed to the enter the store without my notice and were now pointing guns at me.

I couldn't for the life of me remember if mortal weapons, such as guns, could actually kill me but even if they didn't I couldn't imagine that being shot was in any way a pleasant experience.

"Put down the knife!".

I'd forgotten about the athame, it was still my hands and was understandably making the cops nervous. Still they had guns so they felt in control of the situation.

However they weren't.

I blinked once again, and this time it was on purpose, and found myself behind one of the law enforcement officer, before either of the uniformed men realised that was happening my athame was claiming its first, well technically second, life.

The officer wasn't wearing a stab vest, but that wasn't so surprising they would far more worried about being shot than they would be about being stabbed. Back home it was the other way around and my knife attack might not of enjoyed such success.

The second cop moved and aimed but his partner was between us so he couldn't shoot me without possibly killing his still breathing friend.

Quickly I pushed the dying cop towards his partner and before the still healthy human could react I'd vanished again.

The still standing police officer foolishly grabbed his dying partner and that made him vulnerable to my attack.

Using my athame I stabbed the second cop in the neck and watched as the blood began to flow out onto the store's carpeted floor.

So that was killing then. I couldn't see what all the fuss was about. Killing these doughnut munchers had been rather easy, and even a little fun. There was no crippling guilt or even the tiniest bit of regret to be felt. In fact if anything I felt rather happy.

Then I remembered that I'd just killed two cops and the rest of the force wasn't going to like the fact that I had just murdered two of their own. It would be wise of me to leave this city just in case I'd been seen on CCTV.

I was about to Blink to somewhere far away when I noticed the guns the police officers had dropped. They looked to be standard 9mm pistols rather than revolvers and while they might not be much good against magical beings they would come in handy if I wanted to kill more mortals.

Then I realised that it might not be such a bad for me take any money that I could find. I didn't intend to pay for anything I could simply take but if I wanted something proper to eat it would be better to go to café and just order food like a normal person rather than rob somewhere and end up eating junk food.

I pocketed everything worth taking and then focused on where else I would like to be.

"Oh I need a new coat" I decided out loud.

Time to do some more shopping.


	2. Chapter 2

**Witch-King Gothic. **

**Part Two. **

**Demon Bar. The Underworld. **

If you ever want information on the local state of affairs the best place to start gathering said information is at a bar. There are many reasons for this: for starters drinking booze tends to loosen people's tongues and another good reason is large crowds offer a source of amenity.

The reason I was seeking amenity was that Warlocks, such as myself, are pretty low down in the Hierarchy of Evil, but not as low as say Vampires and the other exiles so we were somewhat tolerated down here in the Underworld.

Well at least that was how I'd thought it would be. As it turned out the hierarchy seemed to be shambles because there didn't seem to be any other Warlocks around as far as I could tell and there were many different types of demons (including ones that didn't remotely look human) drinking together. Which was strange as demon types didn't tend to mix well, and even odder than that was the fact that no one seemed to care that I, a lowly Warlock was drinking in a demon bar.

That might have had something to do with the fact that the bar's really big and very distracting TV screen seemed to showing some sort of sporting event. Everyone's attention was being given to what seemed to be two magical creatures fighting it out. The monsters were hideous things and I couldn't recall seeing either type of creature on this show.

In fact they looked more like something Buffy The Vampire Slayer would fight not the Charmed Ones. But if I remembered right demons from the Underworld could come in all shapes and sizes all. They could even be from Buffy's world and somehow have ended up here. After all I was from another dimension, so why could other beings move from one reality to the other.

If that was true then it meant that there could be portals to other worlds I could access or perhaps I could even obtain the power required to open such doorways.

That was just one of the things I needed to ask about and I wouldn't gain any information just by sitting here watching two monsters kick the crap out of each other.

Sparking up I headed for the bar intending to order a drink.

"Hey," protested the thing behind the bar which had way to many arms "no smoking! Can't you read the sign?".

Really? No a no smoking sign in a demon bar. What kind of insanity was this?

Now I really needed a drink.

Thankfully human money was accepted down here so I was able to buy a drink and exposing the fact that I had a bit of cash led to making a 'friend' of sorts.

A blond female demon, dressed in a leather outfit the most outrageous of women I'd ever met wouldn't dare to wear publicly, came up to me and then perched herself upon my lap.

"You're new" she stated.

She of course meant new to this bar, but little did she know just how new I was to everything around here.

Thankfully I was a good at adapting to new situations and demons that looked human weren't really that different from evil humans, at least in my view, and I'd met plenty of evil humans in my time so I knew how to act around them.

Mostly it was important not to show fear and it was also important to act like you belonged in this sort of company.

"Slumming it with a Warlock" said a large bald headed demon with way to many tattoos "that's low even for you, Katrina".

Katrina, assuming that was her real name, climbed off my lap and started to verbally abuse the burly demon, but her words fell on deaf ears even though they were very cruel and she made a lot of references to his manhood and wealth, claiming that he lacked much of either.

I got a good sense of this 'girl' at once, it was clear to me that she would cosy up to any male who access to things she wanted and those things seemed to be money, and perhaps even power.

This made sense to me as demons are self serving creatures who would easily fake affection if it got them what they desired.

As for me well I was more than willing to put up with a gold digging slut if it meant I could grill her for information, and if she didn't cooperate then I could always kill the her. She was just a demon after all, and not one that was well thought of so it was unlikely that anyone would care if she went missing.

"So whose in charge these days?" I asked of Katrina once I had her attention.

"Errr no one really" replied the blond "The Source is dead got himself killed by Zankou, who got vanquished by the Overlord".

I knew enough about the Source Of All Evil not to morn his passing, and I knew about Zankou as well but I'd never heard of a demon called the Overlord. It was a title of a video game I'd enjoyed playing years ago but aside from that the word had no special meaning for me.

"Whose this Overlord?" I asked next "and how did he kill Zankou".

The slutty demon girl went on to explain what she knew about recent history here in magical world.

This Overlord was a being from another world, a world which he had conquered and now ruled. According to rumour this Overlord was slowly building an army in order to expand his domain into other worlds. Apparently he was also the reason that the time line had been reset not once, but twice.

That concerned me more then the idea that there was a very powerful demon around because changes in the time line meant that a lot of my knowledge of this world could be inaccurate.

But aside there being a powerful demon from another world being about there were also some other worrying things going on.

The reason why Warlocks now seemed to be rather rare on this world was because of the rise of a new kind of evil known as the Dungeon Keepers. These Keepers had underground kingdoms which were linked to lots of other worlds and dimensions via some sort of gateways. Evil beings who had souls, which demons didn't have while Warlocks did, were being draw into the service of these Keepers and were using these Gateways to leave this world.

It made sense as Warlocks were drawn to power and made for powerful spellcasters if they had access to the right materials, so the fact that they had almost vanished from this reality due to the high demand for their services was really no surprise.

These doorways to other worlds would also explain how monsters from other dimensions could be here in the Underworld. After all a door can swing both ways.

A few Keepers had tried to take over the Underworld, but the demons had rallied together, which was very odd for their kind, and had been able to defeat the invading Keepers.

It didn't take me long to figure out that these Keepers weren't in fact a new kind of evil at all but rather a video game come to life.

In my younger days, I'd been a big gamer and Dungeon Keeper had been one of my favourites to play since I liked being the bad guy. It was a refreshing change from being the goody hero and I always related better to villains.

Figuring that out made me wonder if the demon The Overlord might be the character from the game of the same name. If one video game could be real then why not another?

"What about the good guys" I inquired "who do I have to look out for?".

"Well there were these three sister witches for a while" answered Katrina once I had supplied her with a drink.

The Charmed Ones, I wanted to hear more about them.

"But they serve The Overlord now. They still show up now and again to take out anyone trying to organise the Underworld or cause real trouble".

Now that was impressive. The Charmed Ones, as I knew them, had managed to defeat anybody who tried to corrupt or otherwise control them. For this Overlord to have tamed them meant that he was either insanely powerful or a genius, perhaps even both.

"The only witch you really need to worry about is Billie".

"Billie, wasn't she the one that had a kidnapped sister?" I said questioning myself out loud.

The slut like female demon simply twirled her hair and looked as if she didn't have a clue as to what I was talking about. I got the feeling that this was her default look and that I would seeing a lot of it, unless I ended her existence.

Killing this dumb bitch would no doubt be a favour to demon-kind but while the hierarchy didn't seem to be in place I wasn't pretty sure that vanquishing this bimbo right here and now, would only aggravate the demons in the bar.

Warlocks were second class citizens at best in this world much like black people had been in America before the civil rights movements. If I killed Katrina the demons would become the local equivalent of a lynch mob.

So rather than knife the stereotypical Californian blond I just ignored her and tried to remember what I could about Billie the Witch.

I hadn't really cared for the last season of Charmed to me it had seemed unnecessary as the sisters had faked their own deaths and gotten out of the demon hunting business.

That season really should have been the end of the story but sometimes TV networks really do fuck up. Like when they cancelled Firefly, oh how that wound still ached.

Well at least the showing of season eight, or was it nine?, meant that I had a clue as to who Billie was and what she could do.

If I remembered right she was, and still could be, a student at a local university, so if I wanted to hunt her down that would be the logical place to start.

Then I remembered that Billie along with her sister formed the so called ultimate power, so it wouldn't be wise of me to go after the witch, at least until I had a handle on my own powers. That included finding out what sort of ability Dark Seduction actually was.

"If I wanted to learn more about my powers who would I go to?" I asked of Katrina

Surprisingly it was the bartender who answered.

"You could ask a Dark Priest," the bar being suggested "they know all about powers and how to gain them".

That made sense as Dark Priests performed rituals and one of my basic powers was the ability to perform rituals. Perhaps a priest could teach something of that art.

"Yeah but yah have to find one" added a nearby drunk demon who could have been a Darklighter given the crossbow resting in his lap "a lot of em went off to serve the Keepers".

I was starting to see why so many demons were sitting about drinking when there was evil to be done, they'd lost the will to do anything because their ranks had been gutted either by this Overlord killing them or by their fellows abandoning them for the Keepers.

"Well its a start" I mumbled to myself.

Thinking about it further I recalled that the priests could shield themselves from others, which made them hard to find. So if I couldn't get to a Dark Priest by simply Blinking then perhaps I could write a spell to take me to one.

Getting up off my stool I made for the door with Katrina chasing after me.

"Your not leaving so soon are you?" she asked with a lusty look in blue eyes.

Well yeah, as getting drunk in a bar full of inhuman monsters was not my idea of fun, and hanging out with a demonic bimbo didn't seem like sucha smart thing to do.

On the other hand a native of this world could be handy to keep around. I knew lots about this world from the TV series, but things here weren't as they were suppose to be so having a local guide me around could be useful.

"Things to do" I told the female demon "you can tag along if you want".

Which she did.

**Graveyard Chapel. San Francisco. **

The chapel was half hidden the graveyard but the rather crude spell that I had cast had transported Katrina and myself to a part of the cemetery from where the chapel was visible.

"Creepy setting, check. Creepy guy, check. Creepy chanting check. Yep this seemed to be the kind of place a Dark Priest would hang out" I said, mostly to myself.

It looked like a church, what with the pews, the altar, the candles and what not, but upon closer examination it clearly wasn't a place of God. It was possible that the chapel could be made to appear as it was a real holy place. But the chapel's lack of repair and the chill air gave everything around her a very unholy atmosphere.

"Welcome my child" said the priest as I entered the chapel.

Katrina seemed happy to say outside and that suited me fine as frankly I found her presence only bearable in small doses. If it wasn't for the fact that she was a shape shifter, which could make her useful, I'd of knifed the shank by now.

"Greetings, padre" I said in reply.

The Dark Priest was pretty much what I expected. He was an oldish looking guy in dark red robes, and he was carrying a leather bound book.

"What have you come seeking?" asked the priest of evil.

"I've come seeking knowledge" I answered "I want to know what it means to be evil".

That sounded like the sort of thing someone would ask a Dark Priest.

It took the priest a little time to fully explain everything, as the demon, assuming he was a demon, spoke I began to better understand how this world and the magical beings within it worked.

In the _Charmed_ universe, 'Good' and 'Evil' are not mere points of view they were real and active forces that had a great impact upon the world. Each side had its own hierarchy, agents, and a long term agenda. This agenda mostly involved attempting to strengthen your own side while working destroy the other side.

However while Evil sought to destroy Good and vice versa that wasn't really the point. Good and Evil needed to exist because this duality was part of what is called the Grand Design. Good and Evil defined each other and both were needed in order to keep the universe going.

Balance between these two opposing forces was required although it was okay for one side to be dominate as long as the other side still had a fair chance of recovering and overthrowing that dominance.

This happened naturally over time and despite the fact that the world could seem like a crappy place sometimes Good was actually winning the war at the moment, but not by so much that evil was out of the race.

Evil beings, such as myself, were suppose to go about acquiring power, performing acts of cruelty towards innocents, try to destroy the Good guys, and otherwise spread evil. These were the literal reasons as to why they.. we existed, and rewards were promised to those who succeeded at these tasks.

In short do evil things and Evil will reward you.

But this wasn't as black and white as it sounded. Good beings could turn Evil and Evil people could go Good. Also doing evil deeds didn't make you Evil. What made you Evil was doing those things for selfish reasons or just because you enjoyed them.

Well that was how it worked with Warlocks such as myself.

It was a bit different for demons as they were naturally Evil and tended to do bad things because they are soulless monsters that need Evil to flourish in order to survive.

To me this all seemed to be an overly simple way of organising a universe, but at least it was easier to follow this system than say the D&D morality scales were you not only had to define people as Good and Evil but also Lawful and Chaotic.

Still overall it did make all of this easier for me to get a handle on.

In this world I wouldn't have to worry if my actions were moral in anyway because as long as my actions served Evil then they were right because that was how the universe worked. Without evil people like me the world would become a much worse place and possibly it would end.

This was interesting to discover but it didn't really matter much to me right now, although it would matter a lot later, as it wasn't what I had come here to discover. What I wanted to know was what being a Warlock actually meant.

According the to evil preacher Warlocks were suppose to hunt down and kill, or even corrupt, good Witches in order to gain more power. In turn good Witches were suppose to try and stop me even if it meant using deadly force.

Again that was pretty simple stuff and not really something I needed to be educated about as the desire to achieve greater power was inbuilt and didn't require much in the way of explanation.

What I did want to know was how exactly a Warlock went about fulfilling this desire. Sure I could just go about hunting Witches but if I was bad at it I'd never get anywhere and if I was skilled at it then I'd likely get vanquished when I got to powerful.

"Tell me about these rituals" I requested.

Hunting the good guys so I could steal their powers wasn't the only way to advance. Rituals were another way to gain power, and hopefully they were far less risky than killing witches.

The Dark Priest seemed happy to teach me and even offered to perform a few rituals for me if I paid him in human souls. How exactly I'd acquire said souls was a mystery to me so I decided to cut out the middle man by stabbing the priest in the back with my power-sucking athame. That way I got the priest's book on rituals and also his power to be able to perform the rituals without discovery.

Quickly I left the chapel and took Katrina with me to go and find a hideou just in case a demon, or any part of a demon, proved useful in these rituals.

Plus she could shape shift so I decided to sleep with her so that I could make her transform into any women I desired. That almost made up for how damn annoying she was.

It might even stop me from killing her.

Might being the operative word.


	3. Chapter 3

**Witch-King Gothic. **

**Part Three**

**Abandoned Warehouse. San Francisco. Charmed Verse. **

I hadn't even needed to leave the city in order to find a hide out, and while where my base was wasn't a big deal. I did have to wonder why I hadn't crossed the pond and set myself up somewhere in my home land.

There seemed to something about this city which attracted magical beings, and at first I wondered if there was some sort of Hellmouth here, which would explain why it was so easy to access a demonic realm from here, but I'd soon remembered that there was magical nexus below the home of the Charmed Ones.

Perhaps that nexus, whatever it was, did indeed attract magical beings, but if it did it wasn't something I could knowingly sense so if it did have any effect on me, and those like me, it was likely too subtle to detect.

While stuff like that was interesting to think about it wasn't really very important as I had no intention of going after the nexus as it had never worked out well for anyone who had tried it in the show. Also I was pretty sure that since there wasn't a super powerful demon running around that it meant that the nexus was in fact protected in some way.

After all while the Charmed Ones might not be living full time on this world these days they weren't the only force for good in this universe, like the Elder's for example, and they wouldn't stand by while I opened up the nexus.

Not that I would do such a thing, even it had been safe, as I had no intention of following the doomed path that so many evil beings had taken in the past.

I'd seen it in the show, every time a Demon or a Warlock made a grab for power much greater that he already had he, or even she, was pretty much doomed.

So I wasn't gong to go after the plot device of doom and nor was I going to risk myself seeking out and then murder witches as that dead bodies tended to draw a lot of attention.

Instead I was going to do the one thing that I knew could give someone fantastic amounts of power, so much power in fact that it would make me invincible.

The Demonic Wasteland.

In theory my plan was a simple one. I would go to the Demonic Wasteland and stay there for a while so that I could absorb the powers that got left behind when vanquished demons made their extremely brief appearance within that realm.

Likely it would take a few visits to that place before I could achieve my goal. I would have to take plenty of supplies with me in order to survive the hostile environment as well as weapons in order to deal with the tentacle monster that lived in the Wasteland, as in this time line Cole might not have already slain the creature or their might be more than one.

However in practice things were not so simply. For starters I had to find a way to get to that realm, and out again.

Blinking there would be simple enough, but I'd already tried that and it hadn't worked. Perhaps I wasn't yet powerful enough to travel to such a far off place or perhaps it somehow shielded from such things.

It might be possible to create a spell to transport me there, and back out again but I couldn't relay on it as the spell might kill me due to the fact that the Demonic Wasteland was a sort of afterlife. Spells could have unpredictable results and I was a still a novice when it came to casting.

The best way to get there, at least in my view, would be a portal. There were Demons called Grimlocks who had an active power that allowed them to open portals to other realms of existence and perhaps even completely different universes.

At least that part of the plan was doable. The book I'd stolen from the now dead Dark Priest explained how to summon certain types of Demons, and the Grimlocks were one of those types. Apparently they traded in spells and so were sometimes conjured up in order to make these trades.

This would make simple enough to take such a creature's powers. All I had to was summon the Demon, and then stun it long enough to stab with my power-sucking athema. To do that I would need a potion potent enough to hurt the Grimlock, but not so strong that it would vanquish the evil being.

Getting the to the Demonic Wasteland was not my only concern. There were other factors I also had to consider.

Such as the environment, but I didn't worry too much about that as Cole had survived the Wasteland long enough to escape and I would be well prepared for the trip.

Then I had to consider the fact that absorbing all powers went against my desire to slowly acquire power rather than to try grabbing supreme power using a method that was both risky and easily derailed by outside forces.

Last of all I had to take into account that humans tended to go mad and then die if they took in a demonic power, but this also wasn't a major problem as Warlocks could safely handle having active demonic powers.

I was a little worried that I might go mad despite my precautions but at least I had time to come up with a way to keep myself sane and since I was planning to take in the powers slowly over several trips I should be giving myself time to adapt.

Plus I had to consider the fact that I might be already crazy.

At least there was a way to test if I could safely handle demonic powers and that way was currently hanging around my new lair trying to keep herself amused when I planned out my trip.

Katrina, a shape shifting demon slut I'd picked up in a bar like she was chewing gum that had suck to the bottom of my shoe, had been following me around for the last few days and she seemed to in no hurry to leave.

If it weren't for the fact that she was so annoying I wouldn't mind her sticking around as form changing power meant that she could look like any woman I desired her to be. That had been a lot of fun, but the novelty would soon ware off and then urge to kill her would fill me once again.

The fact that I could so easily not only plan the death of someone who shared my bed, but also that I could so easily go through with it, forced me to wonder when I had become so blazon about killing.

In the past I'd never would of imagined that I could end another beings life, at least not without a great source of motivation and a lot of regret. Now killing people was no more emotionally troubling than eating meat had been just a matter of days ago.

Granted there was a big difference between eating animals as food and killing sentient beings in order to grow in power, but once you look past foolish mortality you realise that the difference is nothing than mere ambition.

Plus its hard to feel concern over your moral state when you know that you are already in damnation and that your soul is the hands of a being who accepts human sacrifice. After all it wasn't as if I was going to end up in hell or get reincarnated as an earwig as those things required one to have a soul.

Still why I was willing to do a number of bad things in order to achieve my goals that didn't mean that I was willing to say: go and randomly slaughter people just for laughs.

Perhaps that was because such things didn't really aid my plans, and there were also so those Cleaners, beings empowered by Good and Evil whose job it was to cover up any exposed magic, to think about. They might just erase me from existence if I went around using my powers to kill people in public.

Still I had a strong urge to kill these days and perhaps that was the real reason why I was keeping Katrina around. I could kill without anyone caring whenever the mood struck me.

Well that could be the reason or it could be that I'd always wanted a lackey and only a really stupid airhead like Katrina would ever be foolish enough to shack up with a possible insane evil magic user who was planning to obtain godlike power by travelling to a very dangerous realm of existence.

Pushing aside those distracting thoughts and also ignoring Katrina's attempts to dance to some god awful pop music I went back to focusing on my schemes.

The plan to travel to the Demonic Wasteland wasn't the only idea I had written on the notepad before me.

I had already finally found out what the power of Dark Seduction was, and the discovery was leading to my second plan to slowly gain power.

Dark Seduction was pretty self explanatory. It allowed a Warlock to turn someone to the dark using seduction.

Well it wasn't that simple. I couldn't just get a girl into bed and make her evil, as cool as that would be, I had make them care about me even love me. Which wasn't going to be that easy as if I had any skill in making girls fall in love with I wouldn't of spent so much time single when back in my own life.

Thankfully the active power helped with that as it made me desirable, and might explain why Katrina was willing to slum it with a Warlock when she had a whole bar of drunken Demons to chose from.

Anyway even my plan to use this power didn't help me achieve my goals it could still help to get laid and that made it one hell of a gift in my view. In fact the power was a little too good to be have randomly given.

Had it in fact been given to me on purpose?

I realised that my mind was wondering again and the out of date, at least form my point of view, pop music blasting out of the sound system that I had stolen wasn't really helping. Worse the sight of Katrina dancing was even more distracting, but at least it was in a good way.

Once more I forced myself to think about my plans and not about how much better my demon slut would look dancing on the end of a chain that I held while sitting on a throne.

The power of Dark Seduction did open up some interesting possibilities.

It wasn't uncommon for a Warlock to try and start a romantic relationship with a woman he either suspected to be or knew to be a Witch in order to get close enough to her in order confirm that she was a Witch and had powers that were worth stealing.

The Charmed Ones would naturally be a tempting target for any Warlock using this tactic, but they were too powerful to mess with and in any case they seemed to gone from this world for the most part.

However they weren't the only Witches around.

During my short, but still successful, attempt to gain information while in a demon bar I had learned that the bad guys there were, if not concerned about, then at least aware of a Witch called Billie.

She was a tempting target, and unlike the local evil dudes who only knew her name and that she was a women, I knew enough to track her down.

To the demons she harassed Billie was dark haired chick who wore sunglasses and dressed in a rather tacky outfit which disguised just how deadly she was, but that was all a disguise.

From what I remembered she was in fact a blonde haired college student who could pass for normal.

This would be a great help me in finding her as there were only so many colleges in the state and given that she had been seen vanquishing demons within the city she had to be attending a college that was somewhere close by.

My current plan was to visit the local college and then to scour the campus until I found the girl in question.

The tricky part there was that it wouldn't be a good idea for me to wonder about a school while looking for a girl as not only would that be inefficient, it would also be more than a little bit creepy.

Now I was thinking that it might be a good time to kill Katrina so that I could take her powers.

With the ability to shape shift I could pose as a student and try to get myself into the same classes or I could even take over the life of one of the teachers, but that would only get me somewhere if Billie had a thing for older men.

It would be better to shape shift into a younger version of myself, which thanks to that odd meeting at the park I knew exactly how that looked, and then to enrol at the college.

There was no reason not to enact both plans, and that meant it was time for a certain Demon to die.

While still intending to kill Katrina I got up from my desk only to find that at some point she'd gone for a shower and when she saw me holding the atheme she dropped her towel.

At this point I decided not to kill her as I'd been reminded that she did have a few good qualities after all.

"Do you know any other shape shifting Demons" I asked of my evil lackey.

"A few" she answered while recovering her towel "I used to work with them at the strip club".

She used to be a stripper, huh who would of guessed?

"Invite one of them over would you" I requested "I'd love to meet one of your friends, but no one that you're too attached to as they won't be staying for long".


End file.
